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Female Athlete of the Year: Caitlyn Delahaba
Genuine satisfaction comes when a person knows she has achieved all she could achieve, that when a chapter of her life is complete, its pages are replete with accomplishment.
Broad Run pitcher Caitlyn Delahaba has finished one of her chapters, putting a final period on a high school career that rewrote softball record books from the Dulles District to the Virginia High School League and earned her a scholarship to Villanova University.
For her efforts this season and throughout her varsity career, Delahaba has been selected as a 2008 Times-Mirror Female Athlete of the Year.
Delahaba, 17, first played softball at age eight, following in the footsteps of older sister Daniele on the Baseliners travel team, where she “played bench.”
When she was 10, father Danny took over the Ashburn Shooting Stars Gold, an elite travel squad. That year provided her first exposure to pitching, a craft that she and her father learned together.
"He didn't know anything about girls' fastpitch softball when I started," she says. "The first few years while I was learning, he was learning too."
Evidently they learned quickly, as that season brought a Protect Our Nation's Youth (PONY) national championship to the Shooting Stars at the 10U level. Father and daughter have been an indomitable force since.
"My dad is the most important thing in my career," the daughter said. "Without him, I wouldn't have someone out there practicing with me every day -- I wouldn't have someone driving me every day."
That drive led to another PONY national championship at the 16U level, despite Delahaba being 14 years old. It led to more championships once high school began, including three district, three regional and two state titles.
Delahaba's statistics for the Spartans this past spring read like science fiction: 27 wins and 427 strikeouts, a per-inning average of 2.36. Her 2008 ERA is equal to her loss total: zero. She threw 10 no-hitters, and ended her high school career with a 160-inning scoreless streak. Opposing hitters managed a season average of .044 versus her screwball, riseball, curve and a fastball estimated to be in the mid-60s, delivered from 40 feet away.
Underwhelming at 5-foot-5, Delahaba -- under the tutelage of her pitching coach of five years, Kathy Moore -- has fashioned a unique delivery that relies upon lower-body strength and an unusually deep arm swing. A person near Delahaba as she executes her whipping delivery feels a rush of air as she flings the ball homeward with a practiced thrust.
Delahaba was born on Long Island, but much of her grade-school life has been shared with Ashburn neighbors, friends and fellow Spartans Karla Powell and Michelle Clohan, Division I players-to-be themselves. The three have been softball teammates since their Baseliner days as eight-year-olds. The trio's 18U Shamrocks recently earned a trip to Oklahoma City to play for the Amateur Softball Association national title in August.
One title that got away was the 2006 state tournament, which ended with a painful 1-0 loss to Powhatan in the quarterfinal round. Five sophomores on that squad -- Delahaba, Clohan, Powell, Ashley Kramer and Kaitlyn Tiplady -- already had assumed a precocious leadership role on that team.
"The reason that hurt so much is because we know we should have won that game," Delahaba said. “We really beat ourselves, and in sports that's something that you never want to happen. That was definitely the motivation for the last two years."
Delahaba is most satisfied with those last two years, which saw Broad Run go undefeated in 57 straight, culminating in the 2008 national championship of the National Fastpitch Coaches Association and USA Today
"It's something that you feel like you've done everything you can in high school,” she said. “We couldn't have done any better than we did. That's how you want to leave a chapter of your life."
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